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Monday, March 23, 2015

MIKE ON KCRW: Interviewing Author Michael Connelly for "The Business"

On last week's episode of KCRW's The Business, I interviewed author Michael Connelly, whose book series about L.A. homicide detective Harry Bosch has been turned into the Amazon series "Bosch." Amazon just ordered season 2:

Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch first started solving crimes for the LAPD Hollywood Division in the 1992 novel The Black Echo.

Twenty three years later, author Michael Connelly is still dispatching Bosch to LA's darkest corners. He's working on his 18th Harry Bosch novel as we speak.

In all that time, there's never been a Bosch movie. Connelly sold the rights to Paramount in 1995, and while several scripts were written, the film ultimately never got made.

Two other Connelly novels, Blood Work and The Lincoln Lawyer, were made into movies, but Connelly didn't have much involvement with those adaptations.

But now, Connelly has his rights back and the detective finally has his on-screen debut with the new Amazon series Bosch. The show draws on storylines from three of the novels in the series and has the busy, tormented detective tracking down a serial killer while dealing with a lawsuit against him for killing a suspect in another case.

Connelly is very involved with the show. He's an executive producer who's hands-on and on set. He was even the one who suggested Titus Welliver play the title role. Connelly sat down with TV Guide's Michael Schneider, host of KCRW's The Spin-off, to talk about how his most famous character finally found a home at Amazon, the blessing and curse of not knowing ratings, and the awkward moment of making a show with a company that is also feuding with your book publisher.